FREUD ON RELIGION

In retrospect, it's commonly accepted that the founder of psychoanalysis was occasionally off the mark regarding some of his interpretations of human behavior. But far more often than not. he was dead on in his diagnoses of the human condition. I find his authoritative opinions on religion perceptive, pithy, and persuasive. Here are some of Freud's convictions regarding man and religion drawn from David M. Wulff's exhaustive study, The Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary.

The personal roots of religiousness lie in the infantile past of the individual, in the periods of terrifying helplessness that were relieved by the mother, the first love object, and later by the.protective love of the stronger father. The discovery that this helplessness does not end with childhood; that one is endangered throughout life by the powers of nature, by other human beings, and even by forces within oneself; and that death will finally upset life's precarious balance brings back the old anxieties and the desperate longing for the care of the powerful father. In such a manner is born the idea of a benevolent providence, omniscient and omnipotent, who protects human beings from the awesome forces of nature, rewards and punishes evil, and promises perfection in life after death.
Freud related religious belief to a kind of mental or emotional disorder involving insecurity, anxiety, depression, irrational fears and, especially, obsessive behavior. He believed that assuming a spiritual neurosis immunized one against typical neurological kinds. He said, "Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing the personal one."
To replace religion Freud felt that science, not intuition, is the only way we may come to know reality outside ourselves. What science and reason cannot tell us we may have to do without. Persons who have been "sensibly brought up" and educated to reality will leave behind the warm and comfortable home of childhood, facing with courage and resignation the helplessness and insignificance that is their lot. With time, life will become tolerable for everyone and at long last civilization will no longer be oppressive.